Celebrities Open Up About Shocking Sexual Harassment And Assault Experiences

And this isn’t even a comprehensive list.

Oct 18, 2017 8:11am

By Jessica Chandra

Something has changed in Hollywood, and it’s all got to do with Harvey Weinstein. Ever since The New York Times published an explosive expose about the film executive’s unwanted advances on young, up-and-coming actresses, and how he threatened to ruin their careers if they ever spoke of the times he allegedly sexually harassed or sexually assaulted them, celebrities have come out in droves to talk about their own dark experiences in the industry.

At ELLE’s Women in Hollywood event, Laura Dern said, “I have not spoken to one person—nor will you tonight—who hasn’t had an experience with sexual harassment in the workplace.” She added, “It seemed as if it was supposed to be a prerequisite.”

Laura said that she went into the industry with “eyes wide open” because she comes from a Hollywood family, but even that didn’t stop her from getting bullied and harassed.

Here are more shocking stories some of the world’s most famous actors—including some men—have shared. This list isn’t even complete, and seems to grow by the day.

Jennifer Lawrence

At ELLE’s Women in Hollywood event, Jennifer addressed the room with shared this story: “When I was much younger and starting out, I was told by the producers of a film to lose 15 pounds in two weeks or I’d be fired. One girl before me had already been fired for not losing weight fast enough. During this time, a female producer had me do a nude line-up with about five women who were much thinner than me. We all stood side by side with only paste-ons covering our privates. After that degrading humiliating line-up, the female producer told me I should use the naked photos of myself as inspiration for my diet.”

“If at any point you’re wondering why didn’t I stick up for myself, I tried. I asked to speak to a producer about the unrealistic diet regime and he responded by telling me he didn’t know why everyone thought I was so fat. He thought I was perfectly ‘fuckable.’”

Reese Witherspoon

Before introducing her Big Little Lies co-star Laura Dern at the ELLE Women in Hollywood event, Reese told the room that a director had assaulted her when she was 16, and that she had been harassed and assaulted multiple times.

“I have my own experiences that have come back to me very vividly, and I found it really hard to sleep, hard to think, hard to communicate,” she said. “A lot of the feelings I’ve been having about anxiety, about being honest, the guilt for not speaking up earlier or taking action. True disgust at the director who assaulted me when I was 16 years old and anger that I felt at the agents and the producers who made me feel that silence was a condition of my employment.”

“And I wish I could tell you that that was an isolated incident in my career, but sadly, it wasn’t. I’ve had multiple experiences of harassment and sexual assault, and I don’t speak about them very often, but after hearing all the stories these past few days and hearing these brave women speak up tonight, the things that we’re kind of told to sweep under the rug and not talk about, it’s made me want to speak up and speak up loudly because I felt less alone this week than I’ve ever felt in my entire career.”

Lena Headey

Game of Thrones actress Lena Headey took to Twitter to share her personal experience with Harvey Weinstein. She said they first met at the Venice Film Festival, where she was promoting The Brothers Grimm. “At one point Harvey asked me to take a walk down to the water, I walked down with him and he stopped and made some suggestive comment, a gesture, I just laughed it off, I was genuinely shocked, I remember thinking, it’s got to be a joke, I said something like.. oh come on mate ?!?? It’d be like kissing my dad,” she wrote.

Years later, Lena ran into Harvey in L.A. “I had always carried the thought that he’d never try anything with me again, not after I’d laughed and said never in a million years. I believed that he respected my boundary and maybe he wanted to talk about potential work.”

He asked Lena to meet for breakfast under the guise it was a business meeting. Then he pulled the move that so many other actresses have recounted: he invited her up to his hotel room, telling her that he wanted to give her a script. “We walked to the list and the energy shifted, my whole body went into high alert,” Lena wrote. They made it to his hotel room, but his key card wouldn’t work, “then he got really angry. He walked me back to the lift, through the hotel to the valet, by grabbing and holding tightly to the back of my arm, he paid for my car and whispered in my ear Don’t tell anyone about this, not your manager, not your agent.”

“I got into my car and I cried,” Lena concluded. She also revealed in this story that “during shooting [of The Brothers Grimm] I was subjected to endless bullying by the director Terry Gilliam.”

America Ferrera

Joining the chorus of women sharing their experiences as part of the #MeToo social media movement, America Ferrera posted a note on Twitter with the hashtag. “First time I can remember being sexually assaulted I was 9 years old,” she wrote. “I told no one and lived with the same and guilt thinking all along that I, a 9 year old child, was somehow responsible for the actions of a grown man.”

She ended her piece with, “Ladies, let’s break the silence so the next generation of girls won’t have to live with this bullshit.”

Angelina Jolie

Shortly after the initial piece about Harvey came out, Angelina Jolie revealed in an email to The Times, “I had a bad experience with Harvey Weinstein in my youth, and as a result, chose never to work with him again and warn others when they did. This behaviour towards women in any field, any country is unacceptable.”

Gwyneth Paltrow

In the same follow-up piece by The Times, Gwyneth Paltrow said she was summoned to Harvey’s suite for a meeting, just as her career was kicking off. At the end of the meeting, the producer put his hands on her, and suggested they move to the bedroom for massages. “I was a kid, I was signed up, I was petrified,” she said. She never said anything because “I thought he was going to fire me.” She did, however, confide in her then-boyfriend, Brad Pitt, who confronted Harvey at a film premiere shortly after.

Jessica Chastain

“I had a producer spank me as I walked past him in a hallway,” Jessica Chastain shared at ELLE’s Women in Hollywood event. “I didn’t speak up, because I was worried that I might be made un-hireable by dissenting. I have stopped making myself invisible, or small, and to my shock and happiness, my career has not stalled.”

“In speaking up, I’ve come to understand that if a director or a studio doesn’t hire me because of my stance on wage equality, diversity, or sexual harassment, then I’m fine with that. This is an industry rife with sexism, racism, and homophobia. It’s so closely woven into the fabric of the business that we’ve become snow-blind to the glaring injustices enacted every day.”

Ashley Judd

Ashley Judd was one of the actresses who spoke on the record to The New York Times for their huge report. She recounted the story that so many others have since repeated, of being invited to Harvey’s hotel room and having to be there while he was dressed in only a bathrobe. She also said that he asked if she wanted to watch him shower.

Eva Green

It was actually Eva Green’s mother, actress Marlène Jobert, who revealed during a radio interview that Eva had previously been subjected to Harvey’s advances. Then, in a statement to Variety, Eva said the incident had happened during a business meeting in Paris.

“I wish to address comments made by my mother in a recent interview regarding Harvey Weinstein,” she said. “I met him for a business meeting in Paris where he behaved inappropriately and I had to push him off. I got away without it going further, but the experience left me shocked and disgusted.

“I have not discussed this before because I wanted to maintain my privacy, but I understand it is important to do so as I hear about other women’s experiences. Women are often condemned when they speak out and their personal reputations tarnished by association.

“I salute the great bravery of the women who have come forward. We should recognise that this sort of behaviour exists everywhere and is not unique to the entertainment industry. The exploitation of power is ubiquitous. This behaviour is unacceptable and needs to be eliminated.”

Rose McGowan

In 2016, Rose McGowan—one of the actresses who was mentioned in The Times’ report, though she declined to comment—posted a series of tweets that alleged she had been raped by a powerful Hollywood executive.

She did not name her rapist, because according to The Times, McGowan was one of several actresses Weinstein paid out settlements to, “after an episode in a hotel room during the Sundance Film Festival.” McGowan was 23 at the time and the settlement was $100,000.

Rose has since confirmed that Harvey Weinstein was the man who raped her, even though she shouldn’t have.

Evan Rachel Wood

In an interview with Rolling Stone in late 2016, Evan Rachel Wood alluded to the fact that she had been sexually assaulted. After the interview came out, the Westworld actress shared her full email to the magazine on Twitter, which revealed she had been raped twice.

Terry Crews

Shortly after the news about Harvey Weinstein broke, Brooklyn Nine-Nine actor Terry Crews revealed that this experience was not exclusive to women. “This whole thing with Harvey Weinstein is giving me PTSD. Why? Because this kind of thing happened to ME,” he wrote on Twitter. He went on to recount how he and his wife were at a Hollywood function last year, and how a “high level Hollywood executive came over 2 me and groped my privates.”

James Van Der Beek

On Twitter, the former Dawson’s Creek actor revealed that had had his “ass grabbed by older, powerful men,” and that he he was subjected to “inappropriate sexual conversations” when he was younger.